INSPIRED WORD June 13, 2018 Lord, Your joy is our strength, and we just give it all to You tonight. We ask that You give it back in return, a hundredfold. Let the living water bubble through and let us truly live in the power of Pentecost. We ask this in Your holy name, Jesus. Amen. / INSPIRED TEACHING I had to do a little bit of research because I didn t know the two songs were joy tonight to start it out. I found that in the bible joy is mentioned almost 144 times. And I m just going to tell a personal story really quick. I came in tonight like I come in a lot of nights and I m not feeling so joyful. I look around the room and usually I find somebody who s filled with joy, and usually it s someone like you or somebody else, and I m feeling a little bit better. And then I think that even though I had trials, I can t find joy. And so this really quick research I did in three minutes in the back, it talks about finding joy even in affliction and finding the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness joy is in there and for you to receive the word with much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. So it seems very much so that joy and the Holy Spirit should be one. And I think a lot of times we come here and take for granted that the Holy Spirit is here but there s also supposed to be joy with the Holy Spirit. If we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are to be joyful. So that s, I guess, my encouragement. When that first song was on there, I would have loved to see us all up, filled with joy, and a lot of us were We re here. Let s recognize that we re also supposed to be filled with joy. So that s my quick just in the moment teaching since I had to learn something back there about joy, and I wasn t feeling it. (Teaching Series The Power of Pentecost) Thank You for the strength that You pour forth on us tonight, Lord. Take us by the hand and lead us. Praise unto Your holy name, Jesus. Here we are, O Lord, gathered together, and You strengthen us in this place, Lord. Amen. EXHORTATION / Awesome in power, Lord. Can we acclaim Him as healer, children of God? Can we affirm Him as healer tonight? Can we acclaim His greatness in this place tonight? Can we say, O God, how awesome You are? Can we let our hearts acclaim the majesty of the God we serve? Can
we do that tonight? Can we let these songs be a prayer from the depths of our heart? O Jesus, glory to You. O Jesus, mighty are You. O Jesus, our strength. O Jesus, our deliverer. Jesus, our Lord. Dear Lord, we come into Your presence, not by works of righteousness we ve done, but it s underneath the blood of the Son. We come into Your presence underneath the blood, the holy righteous blood of the Lamb, the blood of the Lamb which has set us free, the blood of the Lamb which has brought us out into victory. We just praise You and exalt You and magnify Your holy name, for You alone are worthy. You re worthy of honor and worthy of glory and worthy of all praise. Halleluiah to the Lamb, the holy risen Lamb of God, righteous in all Your ways. We do praise You and exalt You and magnify Your name. For it s not about us; it s about You, O holy Lord. IMAGE I see water and fire, more like a stream of living fire. And the thought came to mind that there s a stream of living fire over us. What could ever put it out? Yes, Lord, let Your river flow, Your river of purification, Your river of courage, Your river of strength, Your river of mercy, Your river of joy, Your river of consolation, Your mighty river, Lord. O Holy Spirit, let that river flow here in this place tonight. We invite You to come, come, Holy Spirit, come and let that river flow, let it flow. / INSPIRED TEACHING A friend sent me a picture of her 6-month old little baby at the pool. And this little baby had finally found her belly button, and she was just poking at it and looking down and she s all but curled up like a pill ball almost, trying to check that thing out. And I saw it, I just laughed and laughed but I also thought how often do we do that with ourselves, that we re so focused on our own problems and our own pain and our own hurt and our own stuff, even when it s good stuff, we re just so focused on the wrong stuff that we re just looking down at that stuff, curling ourselves into a ball, and we can t open up to what God has in front of us. So this song is about entering into that stream but you enter it with your head up and your eyes open, looking for the Lord, and it s seeing Him that s when you let go of yourself. Humility is not saying, O God, I am so bad. It s not saying anything. It s not focused on yourself at all that s what humility is. It s like, I m focused on the Lord. That s what I m focused on. And humility is the by-product; it s the fruit of the Spirit. It s not the thing. It s like, say, patience and saying, Lord, I want the gift of patience and so He gives you a big trial and you say, Don t make it so hard. Patience is the fruit of the Spirit working in us in a difficult situation. So let s lift our gaze up to the Lord and let Him come.
He is so strong and mighty. Last night I was awoken at 1:00 in the morning with His majesty, His power. Our earth was parched. We hadn t had rain in awhile, and at 1:00 I heard His strength and His might come upon us, at least down south in Security, probably here too. So when we are at our end and we are parched and we are dry, He comes in that same power to touch us, to help us in our life. CONFIRMATION / SCRIPTURE I have a confirmation of that in Psalm 24:7-10: Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle! Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! And I believe that Psalm is asking us to lift up any ancient doors, to lift up the gates of our hearts so that tonight the King of glory may come in. EXHORTATION How do we do that? We lift the gates of our heart by declaring the name of the Lord. So here s my story. When I first started coming to this community, I was in a parched, hard, cracked, ugly place, lots of darkness there, lots of bad stuff happening in my life. So I sat back pretty far from all of you guys, looking at what you re doing. I don t know what that is. Looks like a big river, feels like a big river. It looks like a joyful, exuberant, confident river. I was like, I don t know how to swim like that, Lord. It looks wonderful. I don t know what to do with that. It looks wonderful but I don t know how to step in. I don t swim that way. Doris taught me that it s not about my swimming; it s not my skills or my knowledge or my praying a certain way. It all comes from Him. And so He invited me to come from all the way out there to much closer to where the river is so that He could share the river that looked like love the closer I came. And He taught me that it s His love through all of you and the closer I could be to all of you, I felt carried. I didn t need to swim, but by the grace of God that He was so manifesting through His people because He lives in each of you. So if you feel like it s too parched, too uncertain, too I don t know what I m doing here, just come closer. God will carry you. Each of us has different struggles and sufferings. What I do is that every day I offer them up to the Lord the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the conversion of sinners. These are just ideas I thought I d throw out there to you.
SCRIPTURE Probably the only thing I ve learned about getting a word from the Lord is that when you re scared to death, that s when you better come up and give it. This is from Psalm 18:1-3 and it s an enthronement psalm, enthroning the Lord. I love you, Lord, O my Lord and my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon you, Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. Alright, this is a prayer to be sensitive to the Spirit s promptings. This will envelope all of the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given us. So let us pray, please: Our Holy Spirit, You sanctify the people of God through ministry and the sacraments for the exercise of the Christian apostolate. You give the faithful special gifts, also allotting them to everyone according to your will, in order that individuals administer grace to others, just as they had received it, and also be good stewards of the manifold grace of God to build up the whole body in charity. For the acceptance of these charisms, including those that are more elementary, they arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of human beings and the building up of the Church and the freedom given to you to breathe where you will. Help us to learn especially how to perform the mission of Christ and the Church by basing our lives on belief in the divine ministry of creation and redemption and by being sensitive to your movement, your divine Spirit. Give life to the people of God and who urge all to love the Father as well as the world and human beings in Him. Lord, there is the faith of the Church, and let that be the faith in our hearts too. Open our hearts to Your manifold gifts with expectancy. And Lord, give us the urgency to understand that we have a right, and not only that, but we have a duty to exercise them, to spread Your holy kingdom. O Lord, let that burn in our hearts. Let the realization for that burn in our hearts. Glory to You. / EXHORTATION O Lord, for the times we have failed to love others as You would want us to, O Lord, have mercy. O Jesus, for those times that we have failed to follow the inspirations of Your Holy Spirit, O Jesus, have mercy. O Lord, for the times that due to selfishness, we have turned away from sharing what we have, from caring, O Lord, have mercy. O Jesus, for the times that we have turned away from Your love, walked away from You, O Lord, have mercy and pour it forth, Lord. Lord, have mercy. And in our hearts, you know, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, we can call upon Him to have mercy on us, to forgive us for those times that we have turned away, for those times that we have failed due to weakness or to a strong will. So why don t we just ask the Holy Spirit to show us those places in our lives, right now, in our hearts,
where we need to ask the Lord for His mercy upon us, either individually or as a community. Holy Spirit, reveal to us those places now. And as He does that, we might be surprised by the place revealed and the circumstance. O Lord, have mercy. Let Your love wash over us. Message in Tongues Earlier Matt was speaking of evangelizing to other people but something I learned this past week is that all the times we pray for somebody, we should always end In Jesus name we pray. Just thought I would throw that out there because in Jesus name we always do pray. Amen. IMAGE During the tongues, I saw the burning heart of Jesus sort of in front of the whole world and especially the northern hemisphere, like a fire wrapping around the whole world. I saw hands outstretched reaching up to touch the fire, to touch Christ s love for us and for the whole world. Along with what was just said, I just felt the Lord wanting to bless us with His grace and peace. INTERPRETATION I heard Him say three different times, Come to me. I am your Lord. IMAGE / CONFIRMATION This is less interpretation and more correlation. As Mel was speaking I just felt like the Lord This came with an image and it s just going to sound random of a mama cat curled into the side, like the half moon that they do, pulling all the babies to her. And so with that word Come to me, it was kind of that confirmation. I said, Lord, give me a confirmation if I was hearing You correctly and He sent that picture of the mama cat with all the babies, bring them all, all of the babies. SCRIPTURE This is from Ezekiel 20:47-48: Thus says the Lord God: See, I am kindling a fire in you that shall devour all trees, the green as well as the dry. The blazing flame shall not be quenched but from the south to the north every face shall be scorched by it. Everyone shall see that I the Lord have kindled it and it shall not be quenched.
IMAGE Tonight I sensed during the prophetic word, there was another message and this song just confirmed it. I see the Lord binding up our wounds and using the salvation of His blood as salve, a salve that anoints us and heals us and fills us. CONFIRMATION I confirm that because during the song I got the sense that He s filling us to overflowing. O Lord, You treat us with such gentleness. You come with such kindness, that in the midst of our struggles, with gentleness and kindness, You bind us up. O Jesus, gentle is Your heart. INTERPRETATION My beloved ones, tonight you ve heard and experienced the love that I have for you. I hear you and I see you and I feel you, the joy, the hope, the courage, the strength, and yes, sometimes the fear and the doubt and the concern and the pain. Know this, my beloved, that in all those things I am with you. In all of those things I am in you. You never walk alone for I am with you always. Let my love overcome any of the fear or the doubt or the concern or the pain. Let my love overcome anything that keeps you from me. You are my beloved. Hear this, you are my beloved. You have nothing to fear, for my love for you is greater than anything, greater than anything. CONFIRMATION / SCRIPTURE I confirm that word. The end of Psalm 18:17-19, after we talked about my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, it says: He rescued me from my mighty enemy, from foes too powerful for me. They attacked me on my day of distress but the Lord was my support. He set me free in the open; he rescued me because he loves me. EXHORTATION / SCRIPTURE So tonight has come to an end as far as being here but it has not come to an end as far as walking in the love of God. And as everyone was sharing, these words from the prophet Hosea talks about God s great love for us and I would just like to end with that and to invite you to find someone you can share that love with this week. He s talking to the people of Israel and he s saying that the more he called them, the more they went away from him. But then he says (Hosea 11:3-4): Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up in my arms but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks; I bent down to them and fed them. And he says, My compassion grows warm and tender (11:8). And that is our God who lifts us up to His cheek and feeds us with His love, His grace and His mercy.